Political Wisdom: Obama Backs the Ground Zero Mosque

By

Mary Lu Carnevale

Aug 14, 2010 9:47 am ET

President Barack Obama, speaking last night at the White House’s iftar dinner marking Ramadan, defended plans to build a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero. The nation’s commitment to religious freedom he said, “must be unshakable.”

“I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” he said. As WSJ reporters Devlin Barrett and Jonathan Weisman noted, the project “has generated opposition from a host of prominent Republicans, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Resistance to other mosque-building plans has sprouted around the country, but the symbolism of such a structure in close proximity to Ground Zero has generated a national argument.” It was an argument that Obama had steered clear of – until last night. (For the text of Obama’s remarks, click here.)

At Politico, Abby Phillip and Maggie Haberman write that “polls indicate
the issue could be a high-voltage third rail for politicians who support the project: a recent CNN poll found that 68 percent of those surveyed did not approve of building a mosque so close to where the World Trade Center towers fell, killing more than 2,000 people.”…